The Book
The universe has the resources to create conscious beings with cognitive powers. We are the living proof. But what if these resources are limited in such a way that the universe cannot create a being with sufficient cognitive powers to fully comprehend any corporeal object—not acorns or water molecules, let alone intelligent animals.
Quadrants of the Corporeal: Reflections on the Foundations of Experience presents reasons to believe that precisely this is the case, and explains why this cosmic fact makes “the mind-body problem” or “the hard problem of consciousness” impossible to solve. No being that this universe can make can understand what makes conscious beings conscious.
Author and philosopher Randolph Lundberg calls his novel view of this perennial subject the quadrants view. Dr. Lundberg explains the quadrants view in detail and compares it with the published views of many others, paying special attention to thinkers whose views resemble the quadrants view in interesting ways. There are three keys to a full appreciation of the quadrants view: set aside the standard philosophical terminology, dismiss or at least doubt the popular belief in personal immortality, and think carefully about the nature of sensory observation and observation-based scientific knowledge. Together, these three keys can unlock many doors—though by no means all of them.
